Edward W. Hook Scholars in Humanities and Ethics

Edward W. Hook Scholars in Humanities and Ethics
Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities
University of Virginia School of Medicine

Invitation

The Hook Scholars Program in Humanities and Ethics is not accepting applications, at this time.

Program description

The Edward W. Hook Scholars Program in Humanities and Ethics* complements UVA’s four-year undergraduate medical curriculum by providing a humanities, bioethics, and arts pathway through all four years of medical education. Each year, the program selects as Hook Scholars up to four first-year medical students who have demonstrated interest and/or accomplishments in the humanities, bioethics, and/or the fine and performing arts and who intend to keep such interest active, aligned with, and applied throughout their medical studies. Hook Scholars become a vibrant part of the life of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities (CBEH), which provides an organizational and operational framework and mentoring so that scholars may integrate humanities, bioethics, and arts pursuits into all four years of their medical education and their professional identity formation.

* The Hook Scholars Program is named in memory of longtime UVA Department of Medicine chair Edward W. Hook MD (1924-1998). A celebrated clinician, investigator, teacher, and national medical leader, he inspired others to understand disease, doctoring, and health in terms of culture, class, geography, the arts, ethics, economics, psychology, and politics as well as the biological sciences. Dr. Hook sought to train better, more humanistic doctors by helping students and residents develop and deploy core clinical competencies of observation, reflection, moral awareness, and compassion. While chair of Medicine, Dr. Hook was founding chair of UVA’s hospital ethics committee and led the effort to purchase and place original art works in public areas of University Hospital. He created the medical school’s first faculty position in biomedical ethics (John Fletcher PhD, 1988). When Dr. Hook retired as department chair in 1991, he founded and directed the Program of Humanities in Medicine, predecessor to the present Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities.

Program goals

To promote research and scholarship linking medical humanities, bioethics, and arts interests and inquiries to skill sets that

To encourage physicians to pursue scholarship and creative arts practices that address health, illness, and well-being

To promote careers for physicians in medical humanities and bioethics

Program expectations

Each Hook Scholar will

in the summer following first year, pursue a scholarly research project, to be carried out over seven weeks in residence at CBEH and with CBEH faculty supervision, possibly under the auspices of UVA’s NIH-sponsored Medical Student Summer Research Program (MSSRP), with summer registration fees and a modest stipend paid; newly selected scholars will meet with CBEH faculty to discuss and agree upon research projects, which may be part of ongoing CBEH scholarly initiatives [CBEH faculty must approve any alternative and/or nonresidential activity during this first summer]

receive mentoring from CBEH faculty across all four years of medical school

in fourth year, complete an independent research project (or arts portfolio) during elective time (up to eight weeks) in residence at CBEH and present it at a Hook Scholars gathering before graduation

also in fourth year, spend at least four (and up to eight) more weeks in elective courses in humanities/bioethics, including the two-week Hook Scholars capstone, “Calls of Medicine”

attend CBEH meetings, retreats, and activities

participate in the Hook Scholars’ vertical community, with opportunities to model for and mentor one another and to develop learning and service projects